Zadi and I met Ray Doustdar a few months ago when he got in touch with us to ask Zadi to be a part of the "Get Into It" brand campaign he was directing for J!NX, a clothing company that's been on our radar for many years. J!NX is one of the companies that has smartly used the web to build a loyal community, starting from a 10' x 10' room in an apartment to the expansive warehouse they currently occupy. They make extremely cool gear for men and women in case you were unaware! Check out Zadi's page on the J!NX site, alongside awesome people and friends of ours like Felicia Day, Alex Albrecht, and Veronica Belmont to name a just a few prominent J!NX supporters.

It was in our second meeting that Ray floated the idea of shooting some television commercials for the new campaign. We were very much on the same page about the kind of authenticity we wanted to associate with J!NX. These guys live and breathe the digital world, and they wanted to use personalities who live and breathe in that world, too. We met Sean Gailey and Tim Norris, two of the founders and extremely cool guys. It was an easy decision to get onboard and start production. Both of these commercials are currently airing on television every day on G4.

When J!NX talks about the "Get Into It" idea, it really means the things that we geeks are passionate about. That can be a pretty wide range of things, since geekery is mainstream these days. But the important thing we wanted to convey is that J!NX products are as authentic as the people on their site and in their commercials. There's no hard sell going on here -- just real people talking about the things in their lives that they get passionate about.

In case you don't know the pro video gamers from the second commercial, they go by the names Prodigy X, Justin Wong, and TriForce, and they are part of a company founded by TriForce called Empire Arcadia. These guys are famous gaming champions and they go around the country and the world competing for serious money and prizes.

I directed both commercials and Zadi produced them with me and edited them. Our excellent Directors of Photography, Lan Bui and Vu Bui (The Bui Brothers) suggested using the Canon 5D Mark II camera for these commercials. What none of us realized at the time is that, to the best of our knowledge, these are the first broadcast television commercials shot with this camera. If you want to know why that's a big deal, the Buis blogged more about some of the technical facets of the production here.

Big shout outs go to Sarah Atwood for her production support on the Zadi commercial and Rick Rey for his production support on the Empire Arcadia commercial. And Tracie Cotta was terrific with hair and makeup for both shoots. It was a pleasure to work with Ray and the guys from J!NX, and we're planning on doing a few more of these to continue the campaign!

Steve... I just wanted to say that is has been a true pleasure both getting to know you and Zadi as well as working together. You are both consummate professionals, and I look forward to working together on more J!NX commercials as well as other projects.